The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

Time to get some paint on!

Despite building a bunch of Forsaken Chieftains for a conversion article a while back (This one!), I hadn't had a chance to get any of them painted up yet, so my Broken force has been languishing without a properly-attired leader for all this time. This week I decided to remedy this situation!

The model painted here was one of the resin conversions featured in the article linked above, with the normal Xeno Spotter and melee weapon replaced with bionic arms holding a Beam Blastgun and a grenade.



My broken troops were painted with a very quick 'base colours and a wash of brown ink' affair, which was shown in the article way back here. As a force's leader is a bit of a centrepiece, I wanted a paintjob that was going to look like it fitted in with the troops, but was a little more polished. I started out by spraying the model with Army Painter Army Green, as I had with the troops.



I then picked out the base colours, leaving the army green on the pants and shirt, and painting straps, pouches, boots and armour pads with Vallejo Heavy Brown and Beasty Brown, the coat with P3 Jack Bone, her face with Citadel Tallarn Flesh, and everything else with Vallejo Heavy Charcoal.



The next step was to add some highlights. I used Coat D'Arms Putrid Green to highlight the creases in the shirt and pants, and followed up with some touches of Jack Bone on the darker brown areas and face, and P3 Morrow White on the coat and lighter brown parts.



The green was then shaded with a wash of Army Painter Green Tone, and the brown areas and face with Army Painter Strong Tone. While that was drying, I added some white highlights to the hair, and painted the metal areas - the weapon was just given a light drybrush with P3 Pig Iron, and the other metal areas given a flat coat of the same.



Next up, the metal parts were given a highlight with Army Painter Shining Silver. I also painted the edge detail on the coat with some old Citadel Tentacle Pink, and shaded the coat with multiple light coats of Army Painter Soft Tone painted into the creases and concealed areas.



I then gave the metal parts a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone, and shaded the coat edge detail with some light coats of Army Painter Purple Tone.



That just left some final detail work - The eye was painted white and a black dot added in the middle. The bionic eye was painted with Vallejo Red and Army Painter Pure Red, with a highlight of white. For the yellow on the grenade, I started with a coat of Citadel Iyanden Yellow, a top layer of P3 Cygnus Yellow, some shading underneath with Soft Tone and a highlight of yellow with a little white mixed in. The straps on the gun were painted with Heavy Brown and given a wash of Strong Tone, as were the cross-straps on the back of the coat. Also on the back of the coat, I picked out the studs with Heavy Charcoal and added a highlight with Shining Silver.

And, finally, the base was painted with the same urban scheme that I've been using for several of my Maelstrom's Edge forces - you can find a how-to here.



The finished model, leading a Broken force into battle!







Keen to try putting together your own Broken force? You can find the resin Chieftain model and plastic Broken Infantry used here, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

One of the things that I enjoy most about this hobby is finding random things that can be turned into new terrain. This week's article is one of just those awesome little finds - a bunker made from a grocery-store plant pot!

The base for this build was one of a set of three plastic plant pots, found at my local supermarket.



As the plastic these are made of is really hard and shiny, I started out by lightly sanding the outside. This breaks up the shiny surface, and allows glue and paint to adhere better.



I decided to avoid cutting into the pot, as I expected the plastic to be quite brittle - brittle plastic breaks easily if you're not careful when cutting it, and it was easier to just not bother. As such, I took a door from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue and built a small boxwork for it using foamed PVC. I used the side of the bunker as a tracing guide to get the correct angle on the back of the box, so that it would sit nice and flush.



The door was then glued in place using an 'all plastics' superglue (a two-part glue that has a tube of superglue and a 'primer' pen that makes it stick better to plastics that don't do so well with superglue alone), along with a square of foamed PVC cut to fit neatly around the bottom of the bunker.



I used reinforcing struts from the terrain sprue for the bunker's vision slits, shortened up by cutting the last section off each end.



To get the slits positioned right on each side, I marked out the correct horizontal position on a cork sanding block, and used that pushed up against the wall as a height guide.



To cover over the holes in the base of the pot, I cut a square of 1mm plasticard and glued it into the recess.



To finish up, I glued the bunker to a roughly-shaped piece of masonite, and trimmed up the base square of PVC to make it a less regular shape, adding some protrusions with cast-offs of PVC to break it up even further. I also added some buttresses on the three non-door sides of the bunker, to break up line of sight around the perimeter.



I painted over the PVC on the base with some Vallejo Heavy Brown before gluing some gravel mix down over the top with PVA glue - the paint layer helps to stop stray bits of white showing through once the base is painted.



The finished bunker, ready for paint:



And with some paint on:









Build your own bunker by picking up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

Running around is all well and good, but sometimes it's preferable to travel in style. So with that in mind this week I decided to add some extra mobility to my Epirian force in the form of a contractor truck, built from a somewhat neatened-up Games Workshop Ork Squigbuggy.

The basic truck chassis was perfect for the look that I wanted, with the main challenge being to remove anything overtly 'orky'. The ramshackle look is great, but not really in keeping with the Epirian aesthetic. And obviously, the ork crew themselves had to go. The only problem there was that the driver's feet are moulded to the pedals. So job number one was to remove those feet with a chisel-blade hobby knife.



Removing the metal 'teeth' on the front grill was more problematic, so I replaced the grill piece entirely with a new one cut from textured plasticard.



Likewise, there was just too much detail on the rear tray to be easily removed, so I built a new tray out of layered 1mm plasticard, with a centre detail piece cut from plastic mesh.



I considered trimming up the doors, but was on a roll with the plasticard by this point, so quickly knocked up two new door panels and added some Epirian badges using tile-texture plasticard.



The extra plating on the sides of the front cowling was considerably easier. I cut away anything that didn't belong, and gave the trimmed surfaces a light sand to make sure they were smooth.



Humans being somewhat smaller than orks, the driver needed a seat added to fit in properly, so I assembled one out of 1mm plasticard and some more of the tile. For the driver himself, I used an Epirian contractor with the legs cut and repositioned.



The proportions had worked out all wrong to use the original pedals, so the driver's feet both wound up resting on the middle pedal. I added some pieces of plasticard over the other two to cover up the holes left from cutting off the original driver's feet.



I've been making it a feature of my Epirian conversions to include a drone head, and the intake on the hood seemed like an obvious spot to put one, with a little trimming to make it sit as flush as possible.



Rather than trying to wedge a second seat into the asymmetrical cabin, I decided to make it a single-seater and add a drone-controlled weapon in the (ahem) shotgun spot. I built this using a few pieces pilfered from the Master Bot Handler and Scarecrow kits, with a base from a Spider Drone leg piece with the actual legs removed.



To give the weapon a clear fire arc, I cut apart the roll cage and shortened the crossbar so that it would only extend over the driver's seat.



At this point, it was time to putty up any gaps, notably around the base of the drone and the driver's repositioned legs. The roll cage was left unglued for now, and there would be a little more putty filling required once I was ready to put it in place, but this couldn't happen until after I had painted the driver and cabin. (In hindsight, I also should have left the driver separate, as it proved rather difficult to paint him in place!)



The final step was to add some arms for the driver - I needed some outstretched arms, so wound up using Master Handler arms with Contractor shoulder pads added, and the hands replaced with open contractor hands to grip the steering wheel. And with that, the truck was all set for painting.



Painting used the same scheme as I have used on my previous green Epirians - Vallejo Yellow Green washed with Army Painter Green Tone, although in this case I spent a little more time layering the ink to create neater shading and highlights.





I added damage to the paintwork by sponging with Vallejo Heavy Charcoal and then highlighting the lower edges of the paint chips with yellow green.





The metal parts were painted with Vallejo Basalt Grey, washed with a coat of Secret Weapon Soft Body Black, and then drybrushed with Vallejo Light Grey. I followed this up with a final wash of Army Painter Dark Tone.



The next step will be to work up a rules card for this thing, probably with some homebrew rules for transporting units to make use of that trayback!

What have you done to personalise your forces? As always feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

You can pick them up the Epirian models used here, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

Time to check back in on my landing pad display board build! (If you missed part one, you can find it here)

In the first instalment, I ran through the construction of the 'back' side of the display, so this time around I'm working on the landing pad area.

When I cut the foamed PVC for the floor, I left out a curved area that would form the main section of the actual landing pad itself. To fill this in, I cut a piece of 2mm thick cardboard.



On the top surface of the card, I painted a layer of superglue, and then laid a piece of fibreglass flyscreen flat over the card. Once the glue set, I trimmed the screen around the edges.



I wanted a section of the pad to have visible pipes under the mesh, and had cut a cavity into the cardboard for this purpose. Painting this with everything glued in place would be problematic, so I cut the screen neatly down one edge of the cavity so that it can be lifted up out of the way to paint the pipes. The pipes were made from sections of an assortment of plastic rods. Once the pipes and the rest of the pad are painted, I'll glue the screen back down and add a little trim over the top to disguise the joint.



As detailed last week, I built up the walls using foamed PVC. I left a recess around the top of the landing pad wall, along with the pad's retractable roof would slide.



I added support struts from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue along the top and bottom of the walls, with an extra row of reinforcing



As I had pipes running into the wall from the back side of the board, I needed something on the pad side to match up to them. The first became a heat vent, using a trimmed down large pipe fitting from the terrain sprue and a pipe end from a 13mm drip irrigation setup. I shortened the pipe fitting by cutting across it with a razor saw.



For the second large pipe, I built a fuel storage tank using another drip irrigation piece, a piece of plastic packaging that I think came from a laser printer component, and a clear plastic cap - I don't recall exactly where this piece came from, but I think it was some piece of toddler-feeding paraphernalia. I added some connection ports to the front using the small pipe fitting from the terrain sprue and some plasticard.



For the smaller pipe, I ran a matching piece of pipe cut from the side of the terrain sprue, and fed this into an air conditioning unit built from foamed PVC and an assortment of gubbinz from the terrain sprue.



To the left of the pipe I had added a square hatch, just for a little detail, with the intention of this turning into a conveyor feeding into the pad area from elsewhere. For the conveyor belt, I glued in a bunch of plastic tubes to create rollers.



I broke up the vast expanse of flyscreen on the pad with a couple of strips of plasticard, and added a curved strip around the edges to conceal the join between the screen section and the solid floor.



The rectangle cut into the pad floor was intended to turn into a cargo lift. I built the lift platform using a piece of PVC, some support struts from the terrain sprue and a piece of chequer plate plasticard.





To allow for some variation in the display, I wanted to be able to reposition the lift. To this end, I built a hydraulic lift to go under the middle of the platform using some pieces of plastic tube and a couple of pipe fittings. Thanks to the magic of magnets, this all slots together when needed. Alternatively it can be left out, allowing the lift to sit on the floor.



Ships need to recharge as well as refuel. I built a charging port using a shutter window with most of the shutters cut out. Into the resultant opening, I glued a piece of plasticard and some assorted bits and pieces. The charging cable was made from a couple of pieces of plastic tube and the chain from a fob watch I had sitting in my bits box.



At the other end of the board, I wanted some stairs and decking platforms to create some vertical detail. I cut the shape of the platforms out of 1mm plasticard, and glued on some aluminium mesh cut to the same size.





On the bottom of the mesh, I glued matching pieces of plasticard, and then added some diagonal supports using I-beam plastic rod.



The supports for the platforms we made from foamed PVC, doubled-up to give it some extra thickness.



With the legs in place, I added some extra supports for staircases, cut from more PVC. I used strips of textured plasticard for the stair treads. For the moment, I left the platforms and the treads on the lower staircase unglued, to make it a little easier to paint underneath them.



I added some more support struts around the edges of the platforms and on the ends of the legs. I also glued on some posts for handrails, cut from the energy fence piece on the terrain sprue.



Some final small details:
- I added a spray gun (for vermin control) onto the wall using a chemtech sprayer from the Epirian Scarecrow kit with a pistol grip from a Guardian pistol added. For the mounting clips, I used a couple of leftover sections from the energy fence posts.
- I pillaged a clingfire sprayer and a leg from the Scarecrow kit, and a trimmed down Spider Drone head to create a security remote.
- And I made a billboard screen using sections cut from a garage door.



And with that, assembly is more or less complete!



The handrails are just a placeholder for the moment - I'm planning on using 1.6mm aluminium rods for these, so that they can be bent to shape to go down the stairs, but these won't be glued in until the platforms are painted.

















Stay tuned for part three, where we get some paint on this little construction!



You can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

This week, I'm kicking off something a little different for the new year. It's a bigger project than normal, so I'll be spacing it out over a couple of articles, with the aim being to build a detailed display board to use as a backdrop for photographing miniatures. I wanted something that would have plenty of open areas for placing miniatures, and a few different contrasting areas to allow some variety in backdrops with just the one piece. And so 'Landing Pad 16' was born:

Normally when I'm building terrain, I have a rough idea in my head of what I'm going to build, and I just wing it from that. Because this one was a little more complicated, I started by sketching out a rough design, and then translated that into a 1:1 plan on a sheet of cardboard.





For the bulk of the structure, I chose to use foamed PVC sheet. This is a lightweight, but strong plastic material that is easy to cut and shape, and takes extremely well to superglue, which allows it to be used to build solid, detailed structures.

I took my plan and drew up a neater version on the PVC, and then used an exacto knife and steel ruler to cut it out.



I had a slight measuring mishap when scribing some panel lines on the floor piece. Rather than starting over, I just flipped the floor over, making the build a mirror image of my original design. The floor was layered, to allow for some depth in the detailing. With the floor marking out the basic shape for the structure, I could start adding the walls, shaping the PVC to the outline of the building.



The foamed PVC is quite flexible, but I added a curve to the landing pad wall by heating the PVC in boiling water, curving it around a biscuit tin and letting it cool. This wasn't super-effective, but gave it enough of a lasting curve to let it bend more easily to the required shape. Having the natural bend in there means that the PVC isn't trying to spring back as hard against the glue line, giving a more solid joint.



As with all of my Maelstrom's Edge buildings so far, detailing on this one is added courtesy of the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. I created two hexagonal windows for the landing bay freight access corridor by gluing together pairs of trapezoid windows along their long edges.



As I built up the structure, the plan changed a little from the original sketch. I added extra access between the two sides of the board, and brought the detail on the 'reverse' side down from the roof to a first-level courtyard.



The courtyard needed some depth to allow for some staggered model positioning, so I added a couple of descending platforms on the rear, using layers of PVC to create the steps between levels.



I had planned for a groove to run around the top of the landing pad wall, which would theoretically serve as a runner for a retractable roof - I'm not building the roof, but wanted it to be implied for completeness. For the roof groove to have depth, this needed to protrude into the back facing of the wall, so I built up a box structure using layers of PVC.



The doors on the terrain sprue have detail on both sides, but as they're intended to be used on external structures they only have the framework on the one side. I created a double sided doorway by removing the frame from the rest of the door using a razor saw. On a second door, I cut the door itself out leaving the frame intact, so I could have an open doorway for the freight access.







However carefully you cut and glue, you wind up with some gaps and rough edges. I used some putty to fill in wherever necessary, and once set used some fine sandpaper to smooth it down.



To give the walls some structural detail, I built up a recurring pattern using the support struts from the terrain sprue, and glued this on along the top and bottom of each wall. For curved walls, I carefully bent the strut to shape before gluing it in place.





Rather than having bare cement floors everywhere, I added tiles to the courtyard area using textured plasticard. By cutting out squares of tiles in a regular pattern, I inserted some decorative areas of smaller tiles - these will be painted up with the Epirian Foundation logo.



Using ladders from the terrain sprue, and posts cut from sections of the sprue itself, I added a handrail around the courtyard.



I left the handrail open in a couple of places, to allow some avenues for displaying models and show where the terrain would theoretically continue past the confines of the display board. I did extend the rail part of the way down the stairs, by cutting a piece of 2mm plasticard in a pattern matching the rungs of the ladder.



Down the other end of the board, behind the landing pad, I built some nice, hefty pipes using the large pipe fitting from the terrain sprue and some 13mm garden drip irrigation fittings.



I scattered some smaller pipes around the place using the small pipe fitting, some plastic tubing, and some more scrap sprue from the terrain sprue.



With all of that done, this side of the board is more or less done. There is still a little more gap filling and sanding to be done, and probably some more small details to add here and there. I'll need to add some sort of trim around the bottom edge to neaten everything up, but that will wait until the other side is finished so I can make it consistent.

















Stay tuned for part two, detailing the landing pad side of the board!



You can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

Following on from my improbably-mobile Pa'ku conversion, I'm continuing the jetpack theme this week with a bit of a closer look at the Epirian SecDef Boostpack Infantry models released last month.

Released in a pack of three models, Boostpack Infantry take to the table as a SecDef Rapid Intervention Team, where their boostpacks and twin carbines allow them to get in close to the enemy and lay down a withering hail of fire.



The high quality resin kit comes with the body and head as a single piece, with separate weapon arms, boostpacks and grenades. The unit's rules card also gives them access to a couple of special weapon options - these will be coming in a separate release very soon!



Assembly is really straightforward - the boostpack goes on the back, with a handy locator pin slotting into the model's backplate, and the arms go where you would expect, and are fully interchangeable between the three models.



There is no specific mounting point for the clingfire grenades - you can glue them to the belt, chestplate, thighs, or wherever else seems appropriate.



While the armour is the same as the regular plastic SecDef models (aside from the head!), the shoulders are slightly different to allow for the boostpack mounting plate extending up over them. You can sub in arms from the plastic sprue though by removing the small shoulder pad piece shown below in red.



With a little more work, you can create gasmask-equipped SecDef Tactical Teams, by using the plastic arms and filling in the boostpack mounting point with a little green stuff putty.



For a little more leg variety, you can use a sharp hobby knife or razor saw to cut through the bodies just below the belt. This allows you to glue on legs from the plastic SecDef to mix up your boostpack models, or use the resin legs on your regular SecDef teams to add some running models.



SecDef Sergeants have, from time to time, been known to requisition the best gear for themselves. This sergeant has given himself a bit of a boost with a twin-turbine boostpack, made by trimming off the locator pin on the pack and gluing two boostpacks side by side to the model's back.



Finally, why should SecDef have all of the fun? While boostpacks are notoriously unreliable and difficult to keep operational, it seems likely that some Broken chieftains or techs with the right technical knowledge would be unable to resist the lure of the extra speed afforded by a scavenged unit!



To add a Rapid Intervention Team to your Epirian force, you can pick them up along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

Pa'ku are generally regarded as slow, deliberate creatures, rarely rushing into action and often waiting on the sidelines of a battle pondering the best course of action before deigning to lend their (once they get going) formidable skills to the fray. While playing with the resin model, though, I happened upon a conversion idea that was just too much fun to not do it - and so the Jet Pa'ku was born!

I originally put this guy together for a spotlight article on the Pa'ku model when it was released (which you can see here), and in his unpainted state he looked like this:



The conversion used most of one Pa'ku model, the main part of the gun from a second, two auto sluggers taken from the Broken Infantry sprue, and the bottom of an energy fence piece from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue.



I had to make some changes to his pose, so repositioned his arms by soaking them for a minute in boiling water, bending them into the shape I wanted, and then dropping them in some ice water to 'set' them in that shape. To fit the hands onto the guns, I trimmed away some of the webbing between the fingers, widened the trigger space by cutting away a small piece at the back of the gun, and gently bent the fingers around the grips. I also cut a wedge out of the front of his neck with a razor saw, and bent the head forwards using the same hot/cold water treatment. The minor gap that was left behind was filled in with a little 'green stuff' putty.



The Pa'ku's feet are very flat on the bottoms, to attach to the base. That just wouldn't do here, so I used the above hot/cold water treatment to add a bit of a curl to the toes, and then sculpted some detail onto the bottom of the feet with more green stuff.



For the jetpack, I used the main sections of two quad mortars. I trimmed the fittings up so that they would attach sideways to the Pa'ku's backpack, added a turbine from the Epirian Firefly Drone on the front where the weapon barrels normally go, and filled in the gap in between the two new jets with the energy fence base, some green stuff, and a small piece of plasticard over the top to neaten it up.



With everything else assembled, the final detail was to add the smoke trails from the jetpack. For rigidity, I cut a couple of pieces of plastic sprue to the right length and glued them bases for ease of working. Then I covered these in a mix of shredded cardboard (made from small pieces of cardboard box run through a spice grinder) and PVA glue. This was a bit experimental, but looked the part once done, so I crossed my fingers and just hoped it would work out right when it was painted.



Speaking of which, painting started out with a basecoat of Army Painter Army Green spray.



I drybrushed over the skin with Coat D'Arms Putrid Green, and went over all of the metal and leather parts with Vallejo Beasty Brown. The leather straps then got a coat of Vallejo Heavy Brown.



I drybrushed the metal areas with P3 Pig Iron, and then washed the metal and leather parts with Army Painter Strong Tone. I also went over the skin with a generous coat of Army Painter Military Shader wash, and when this was dry, picked out the fur around the backpack, the weapons, claws, targeter and the smoke trail with Vallejo Heavy Charcoal.



Since making the smoke trail clearly wasn't getting experimental enough, I had also decided to try painting a flame effect into the smoke. I did this by picking out sunken areas near the jet nozzles with white, then painting in some yellow and red, leaving the brighter yellow deeper in and fading out to red closer to the surface. Then I drybrushed over the top with more Heavy Charcoal, and highlighted with Vallejo Light Grey and some white.



The weapons, claws, fur and targeter were given a light drybrush with Vallejo Neutral Grey and then a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone. I also added some Dark Tone patches on the jetpack to break up the metal tone a little, and painted the bumps on his back with some old Citadel Tentacle Pink, washed with a couple of coats of Army Painter Red Tone.



This just left some finishing touches - I gave the weapons a highlight with a very light drybrush of Pig Iron, picked up the cloth bindings with the old Citadel Liche Purple with a Tentacle Pink highlight, added some highlights and scratches to the metal bits with Army Painter Shining Silver, painted in the eyes with Citadel Iyanden Darksun, and finally popped some Army Painter Pure Red onto the targeter lens with a white highlight spot.











And there he is! There are no game rules for this monstrosity; it was purely an exercise in conversion for the sake of it. Sometimes it's fun to take a break from assembling game-ready forces to just build something cool!

To add a Pa'ku (or a Jet Pa'ku!) to your own Broken force, you can pick him up along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

Hakoyu Grand Masters are masters of close quarters fighting, lending the experience of decades of training in combat skills and their exquisitely-crafted energy weapons to the Broken Federation's cause. This week, I'm taking a closer look at the model for this fearsome melee veteran.

The Hakoyu Grand Master is a multi-part resin model, with the body cast in one piece and all four arms joining at the elbows. Two of the forearms are equipped with the Hakoyu's shields, while the other two hold the Phase Weapons - a sword and an axe.





The elbow joint is a ball-and-socket affair, which allows for a decent range of posing, and also allows you to choose where to put each forearm.



Of course, that also means that you can mix and match arms between models - for the below model, I swapped out the shields in favour of doubling up the weapons. The second axe and sword were switched to the opposite side simply by slicking them off just above the hand and switching them, gluing each weapon onto the hand the other had been removed from.



Phase weapons take many forms, at the preference of the individual Grand Master. For this model, I replaced the sword and axe with a double-ended polearm - presumably this Grand Master would be skilled enough with this weapon for it to have the same effect as fighting with two separate blades! The hands were swapped out with plastic hands from the Broken Infantry sprue - as the Hakoyu only has three fingers, I resculpted the fingers on the left hand with a little 'green stuff' putty. The right hand is bionic, so I left it as is - ill-fitting bionics would be just one of the difficulties faced by alien races amongst the often poorly-equipped Broken.



Life on the Edge is hard, and emergency surgery and appropriate bionics are not always available when needed. It would be expected that this might take a toll on veteran Grand Masters, who spend so much of their time in the thick of the fighting. This Grand Master has at some point lost two of his hands, and rather than replacing them with bionics has had his Phase blades strapped directly to his wrists. I also put this model into a slightly more crouched pose, but cutting through the lower knee joint, bending the legs and then filling in the remaining gap with some putty.



Finally, while known primarily for their fearsome skills in melee, I would expect some Grand Masters to take pride in mastering all aspect of warfare. This Grand Master has eschewed the usual Phase weapons (aside from the one still strapped to his back - you can't turn away completely from tradition, after all!) in favour of a long rifle converted from two slug rifles from the Broken Infantry sprue. The forearm (another bionic) is also taken from the Infantry sprue. I also doubled up the larger of the two shields, but cutting the small shield off the right forearm, and the arm off the large shield, and then gluing them together.



What have you done with your Grand Master? Feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

You can pick up the Hakoyu Grand Master along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

The addition of the Contractor Drone to Epirian Contractor units gave them some new tactical options, with heavy weapon options for the re-titled Contractor Defender units, and supply drone options for the new Contractor Scout unit. This week I'm looking at some modeling options for the multi-part, resin Contractor Drone model.

Building one of four different options, the Contractor Drone kit comes with three different weapon options - a maglock chaingun, twin cluster missile pods and twin flakk guns. It also includes the Resupply Package for the Contractor Scout unit.





While sharing a superficially similar configuration, the Contractor Drone is a distinctly different model from the Spider Drone, with a chassis that is bulkier and taller. It also has weapon mounts situated beside its off-centre sensor unit as opposed to the Spider's side-mounted set-up.



The drone's legs all fit into any of the four shoulder sockets, with a barrel pivot allowing them to be positioned through a wide range of movement.



The equipment options slot in with a large locator tab. If you want to keep your options open, you can use a small piece of blu tac or similar re-usable adhesive to temporarily fix them in place and swap them out as you want.



Since I have problems assembling things the way they're supposed to be, I couldn't resist taking a knife to the kit to see what I could do with it. For a taller profile, I repositioned the feet on the below drone by soaking the legs in hot water and then bending them. I also cut through the legs right beside the shoulder assembly and glued them back on at a shallower angle.



One of the weapon options - Strike Missile Pods - didn't make it into the kit for the initial release. There are a couple of fairly easy ways to get around this problem if you want Strike Missile-equipped drones. For this one, I took a pair of Strike Missile pods from the Hunter Warmech kit, trimmed them up a little to fit onto the Contractor Drone front and glued them together.



If you don't have a Hunter kit to hand, you can also take the Cluster Missile pods, trim the missiles flush with the front of the pods, glue a 1.5mm hole into the front of each pod and glue in two pieces of 1.5mm plastic rod trimmed to points.



For a closed version of the Resupply drone, I cut through the supply cache directly behind the front panel using a razor saw, and then glued the panel directly to the front of the drone.



Legs are all well and good, but sometimes a more stable platform is called for. On the below drone, I replaced the legs with a skirt made from sections cut from a lintel piece found on the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. Under that, I added some tracks purloined from an old Mechwarrior tank model.



The Contractor Drone chassis also makes a nice, solid foundation for a remote turret assembly, to be installed on fortification walls or vehicle hulls. In place of the legs, I added a mounting column cut from a length of plastic tube, and inserted that into the small pipe fitting from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue.





You can pick up the Contractor Drone along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

A side effect of building a lot of scratch-built terrain is that you sooner or later find yourself eyeing off all of your rubbish, trying to decide whether to throw it out or put it in the 'terrain fodder' box. This week's article comes from seeing an empty yoghurt tub sitting upside-down on the sink and thinking 'Hmm... I could totally do something with that!'

With the addition of half of a plastic Christmas bauble, and some bits and pieces from the terrain sprue, I built an observatory:

This all started, as I said above, with a 700g yoghurt tub. I was undecided at first as to just what to do with it, but when I went fossicking around in my potential terrain bits collection, I came across half of a plastic bauble that my wife bought a couple of years ago with Christmas stamps or somesuch thing in it. It looked a perfect size to combine with the tub, and so an idea was born.



I decided to keep this one fairly light on extra detail, for a clean, functional-in-a-sciency-sort-of-way building. The first thing to do was add a door, so I grabbed one from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, traced around it on the side of the tub and then cut out the doorway rectangle carefully with a sharp hobby knife. After checking the fit and making some slight adjustments with the knife, the door was glued in place with an 'all plastics' glue (a two-part superglue that includes a 'primer' to help the glue grab to plastics that can otherwise be problematic for a strong glue bond).



I added three support struts spaced around the building, just gluing them in place where I wanted them.



For the dome, I took some more support struts and separated the small square sections with attached rivet strips by cutting through the strut with the knife. I gave these a slight curve by bending them carefully over the handle of the hobby knife. On the bauble, I drew a guideline through the middle and then glued the strut sections and a large pipe fitting along the line.



I then glued the bauble in place on top of the yoghurt tub, and added two more support strut pieces halfway around each side, to help reinforce the glue bond, as the edges of the bauble are fairly thin.



Finally, I cut an 8" square of masonite, and glued the tub in the middle of it. I also added a couple of steps cut from an off-cut of foamed PVA, and a little strip of plasticard to cover over the doorstep, where my doorway cut had been a little untidy.



A couple of coats of spray and a little detail work later, and the new observatory looked like this:



A quick tip on painting clear containers - it can be a really good idea, particularly if you are using lighter colours, to spray the inside of the container black or grey before gluing it in place and painting the outside. This helps to make the end result more opaque, as the painted building can otherwise go a slightly translucent or look a little glowy if there is a strong light behind it. It also helps keep the building looking good if the paint gets scratched on the outside.







To build your own yoghurt tub science building, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

This past month saw the release of the Pa'ku for the Broken faction, taking to the field with their gigantic Quad EMP Cannon strapped to their rather large backs. This is another brilliant model in a slowly growing collection of characterful alien creatures for the faction, and so in my usual style, I figured it would be fun to take a hobby knife to it and see what happened!

The fantastic studio model below shows the Pa'ku in all his warty glory. He's big, he's ugly, but nobody's going to tell him that so long as he has that gigantic quad cannon pointed in their general direction!



The Pa'ku is a resin model, and comes in 6 pieces, along with a 45mm base. The arms are on ball joints that allow for a bit of posing movement, and the cannon barrels have a round locator piece, so can be swivelled around to whatever orientation you prefer.





The immediate, obvious conversion opportunity is to replace the quad cannon with a larger-bore, single cannon. On the below model, I added a ring of plastic tube over the rear tube assembly, and replaced the barrel section with a new, larger, single barrel made from layered plastic tubing, with some plastic rod struts on the sides to give it a little extra detail.



As an extra bonus, you can also put him on the table with the unofficial rules card in the Force List section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here. You could easily leave off the side detailing and just use a single piece of 10mm tubing for a less detailed but much easier conversion, or use a different gun entirely for other heavy weapon variants.

Venturing a little further outside the box, the slow moving, steady Pa'ku seemed like an ideal candidate for ferrying around notable Broken characters who prefer not to dirty their own boots any more than necessary. With that in mind, I took a Pa'ku and assembled it without the gun, and then added a platform onto the back with a little plasticard, and added a rider built from the Broken Infantry sprue. The handrail is cut from a ladder from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, and the sheath of extra harpoons is a piece of plastic tube filled with offcuts of 1mm rod, attached with a rivet piece from the previously-hacked-up ladder.



Of course, it's possible that not all Pa'ku are as slow and deliberate in their actions as the species is renowned for. What happens to those more headstrong, battle-hungry Pa'ku? I'd like to think they turn out something like this:



The jetpack was made from the main section of two quad guns, with help from a little putty, Epirian drone parts and plasticard. The head was repositioned by cutting and bending the neck, and the forearms twisted in hot water and guns added from the Broken Infantry sprue. I'll be sharing a more detailed build of this one in an upcoming article, once I get some paint on him!

To add some giant-cannon-goodness to your own Broken force, you can pick up the Pa'ku along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

Big, burly, slow to anger but nigh on unstoppable when they get rolling, the Gnolti is an impressive sight on the table, and is one of my favourite models. A while back, I got to thinking about the different ways that the ongoing battles around the Maelstrom's Edge would affect these massive, generally peaceful aliens, and started exploring this with my 'Longhorn' conversion. At the other end of the scale from the implacable veteran, I thought it would be an interesting contrast to have a much younger Gnolti who handles the constant call to arms in a much more direct fashion - and so the Gnolti Berserker was born:

As with my previous Gnolti conversions, this was built from the standard Gnolti model.



I wanted to give him a charging pose, as this guy was definitely not the 'sit back and take a breather' type of fighter! So I started by cutting the left leg off with a razor saw, and then reattaching it with the leg pivoted to the rear.





In place of the Gnolti's normal field generating bucklers, I thought it would be fun to give the berserker an array of scavenged blades to fight with. Using a sharp exacto knife, I cut off the existing detail from the shields, added some cracks and dents, and glued on some blades cut from the resin casting tab that the parts came on. (Waste not, want not!) As the left hand's fingers are slightly flattened on the bottom where they normally sit on the base, I also reshaped these by carefully rounding them off with the knife and adding in some knuckle lines.



For my Longhorn, I had gone with the idea that the Gnolti's horns would grow as they age. Running that idea backwards, a younger Gnolti would therefore need shorter horns. I figured that reducing his beard would also be fitting, and so I cut away the back couple of sections of the horns, removed all of his beard, and also sliced open the mouth with a razor saw and, holding it under some hot water, carefully bent it open.



I used 'Green Stuff' putty to replace the missing detail around his neck where the horns and beard were originally, resculpted a smaller beard and added a layer over the lower lip to reshape it.



Similarly, I filled in the gap created by re-posing the leg, and also removed the blanket roll from the Gnolti's back just to create a little visual difference from the others, and sculpted in new draped cloth in its place.



Finally, I glued on the arms and did a little final gap-filling where the reposing of the arms caused them to not fit flush at the elbow joints.





Painting was largely the same as my original Gnolti conversion, although I used a very slightly darker grey on the scales and made his beard a brighter orange.









Conversions are only part of the fun, of course - What about getting the models on the table? You can find unofficial rules cards for the Gnolti Longhorn and Gnolti Berserker in the Force List section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here, or download a printable version in the 'Unofficial Cards' PDF compilation here.

If you want to give them a try but aren't as confident in your converting, you can very easily use the standard Gnolti model as a fill-in - for the Berserker, paint him without the light on the shields and maybe make him a bit dirtier, and for the Longhorn just glue on an appropriate gun in the right hand, and you're good to go!


Family Shot!

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To put together your own mountain of xenos rage, you can pick up the Gnolti kit along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

One of the most enjoyable aspects of terrain building for me is to find everyday things that, with a little bit of tinkering, suddenly turn into something that looks at home on the battlefield. This has resulted in me spending more time than is healthy wandering through hardware stores and discount shops looking for new fodder for the workbench - it's often a little surprising where that perfect next project piece will show up.

This week's build is based on an idea that I have come across in several different incarnations online, and thought it looked too cool to not try it out. So after a quick trip to the local grocery store, I found myself building a generator out of bubblegum tape dispensers!

I picked up two packs of grape-flavoured Hubba Bubba. Obviously, the flavour doesn't make any difference to the build, but if you're buying bubblegum anyway, is there any logical reason to buy any flavour other than grape?



The first step was to remove the bubblegum from the packs, and remove the labels. The labels mostly peeled off easily, but needed a little cleanup with some Tea Tree Oil to remove the sticky residue - If you don't have access to Tea Tree Oil, use whatever local equivalent you have for cleaning sticky residue off things.

Then I may have got momentarily distracted...



One side of the pack has an internal ridge running down each long side of the opening, and a pair of tongues that close over into the other half. These needed to be removed, which I did with a sharp exacto knife. They're made from a fairly soft plastic, so cut easily.



This left four almost-identical, semi-circular pieces.



To join the segments together, I took four 25mm bases and cut them in half with a razor saw. The arc markers on the Maelstrom's Edge bases serve as a handy guide for this, but if you are using different bases then some measuring and marking would be involved here.



I cut a piece of masonite to an appropriate size for a base, and then a smaller piece of foamed PVC for the generator to sit on. I could have used another piece of masonite here, but figured the plastic gum dispenser would glue better to the PVC. On the PVC, I marked out where the dispenser pieces would sit, and added a 25mm-wide centre strip to serve as a guide for gluing the base pieces on.



Then, I sat each dispenser piece in turn onto the marks and glued the base sections in position on both sides using an all-plastics glue.





(The 'all-plastics' glue that I use is a 2-part system that has a tube of superglue and a 'primer' pen. You prime the contact points on both parts to be glued before applying the glue, and it creates a super-fast and extremely strong bond with just about any type of plastic).

It was around about this time that I noticed that there were small recycling symbols embossed on two of the dispenser pieces, so I carefully shaved these off with the exacto knife and lightly sanded down the surface. Then I moved on to the ends. Due to the dispenser having that tongue that I cut off back at the start, one side was left with a flat plate, while the other had a hole where the tongue originally slotted in. I took the cut piece of tongue and glued it into this gap.



Then I took eight support struts from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, and cut off the vent sections on their ends. These were glued in pairs into the dispenser opening.





The four sections of dispenser were then glued down onto the base, with the 25mm base sections on each touching the matching section on the next.



I felt that the generator needed a control panel, so quickly threw one together using a console and two trapezoid windows from the terrain sprue, with a square of foamed PVC as a base.



With that glued in place onto the masonite base, the generator was ready for some paint!



I painted it up using my normal weathered metal technique (which you can find in the tutorial here).





To build your own generator, you should be able to find the bubblegum tape just about anywhere that sells bubblegum, and can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!



For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

As anyone who has been following these modeling articles may have noticed, I have all sorts of trouble looking at store-bought kits and not immediately coming up with various ways to hack them up and glue them back together again, and this week's article is no exception. There are a plethora of outstanding MDF building kits out in the market these days, which can be great options for inexpensive, easy to build terrain. Thanks to how easy it is to cut and glue, they can also form a great base for modification. I recently put together a basic desert building from Knights of Dice's Tabula Rasa range, with some extra detailing courtesy of the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue (If you missed it, you can find the article here), and this week, I'm taking a stab at a second building from this range. Intact buildings are just so pre-galaxy-spanning-apocalypse, however, so I'm taking the knife to this one and creating a small abandoned outpost:

The first step was to plan out exactly how I was going to destroy the building, so I popped the parts off their sheets and fitted the basic structure together with no glue. Then I took a pencil and drew a rough line around the outside where I wanted the walls to be damaged.



I cut the walls using a sharp exacto knife, by scoring through on the outside following the pencil line relatively closely, then scoring a roughly corresponding line on the inside of the wall piece (this wasn't an exact match, just eye-balled to be close enough) and then snapping the piece in two. The edge was then cleaned up using the knife to remove any fluffy or protruding parts.



When all of the cuts were completed, it was time to add some detail. The Tabula Rasa kits are deliberately plain, both to keep the cost down and to provide a generic structure for detail pieces to be added, and so they're a perfect base for the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue!

I took a door piece and used a razor saw to cut the door out of the frame, and broke the frame into several pieces. Some scarring was also added with the knife.



I widened both the exterior and interior doorways to match the terrain sprue door pieces. The door frame pieces were glued in place on the exterior doorway, and I added a second doorframe with the door also removed but the frame left intact into the inner doorway. Support struts cut to length were glued over the corner joints on the walls to hide them, and add a little more visual interest to the otherwise fairly plain, boxy building. On the first Tabula Rasa building I added detail over the window holes as well, but for this ruin it didn't seem necessary.



The courtyard has a low MDF wall that runs around it, but I wanted something a little more flashy, so I took a couple of ladders from the terrain sprue and cut off one side with a razor saw.



These were then cut to length and glue in place around the edges of the courtyard, after gluing the scrap pieces back into the locator holes for the original wall to fill them in.



To help turn this into an old, long-abandoned ruin that the jungle had started to reclaim, I built up some patches on the floor with air-drying clay.



I pressed a few castoffs pieces of MDF into the clay, and glued the distressed door down on the courtyard floor. Over this, I painted a thick layer of PVA glue and sprinkled on a generous layer of a gravel, sand and railway ballast mix that I like to use for building rubble as it has a lot of different textures in there.



When the PVA glue had dried, I tipped off the excess gravel mix, and then it was time to paint. I didn't have a brown spray to hand, so I undercoated with some flat black and, while it was still wet, followed up with a light coat of Army Painter Dragon Red.



Over this went a coat of a light cream colour, and then a highlight spray of white from above.



I went back over anything that I wanted to look like exposed metal and re-undercoated with Vallejo Beasty Brown, before drybrushing with P3 Pig Iron. The few bits of the original floor still peeking through the rubble were painted with Vallejo Basalt Grey and drybrushed with Vallejo Light Grey.



With that out of the way, I went to town with washes!

I gave the whole building a generous coat of Army Painter Strong Tone. The walls were painted with a medium-sized flat brush, using vertical strokes to create a streaky effect and allowing the wash to pool and run where it felt like it. When that first wash had dried, I went back over it, picking out small areas with extra dollops of Strong Tone and also adding some patches of Green Tone and Military Shader to give them a greenish, mossy tint.



Time to add some shrubbery!

I took a bunch of assorted fake plants. Most of these are cheap aquarium plants, although I also used a bunch of plastic greenery taken from a mat I found at a local hardware store for creating fake vertical gardens. It looks rubbish as an actual plant feature, but is a perfect resource for my purposes here.



Fake plants, particularly the cheaper kind, tend to be rather brightly coloured and slightly glossy, which just wouldn't do. I got around this by giving the plants a light spray with Army Painter Army Green - not enough to completely cover over the original colour, but enough to dull down the colour and shine. To add some extra colour differentiation, I very lightly misted the tips of some of the plants with white. The painted plants were then glued in place wherever seemed appropriate, but poking a hole through the rubble and into the underlying clay, applying some superglue to the plant stem and pushing it into the hole. I also cut some leaves off a few plants and glued them around on the ground.



The final step was to paint the fallen leaves with varying amounts of brown, and then a quick wash of Strong Tone. At this point, the ruin looked something like this:











To get all apocalyptic on your own building creations, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!



For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

This week, I'm having a play around with another of the original models released with the Battle for Zycanthus boxed set: The Kaddar Nova!

The Kaddar Nova is a member of the Karist Enclave priesthood, but they are often granted operational control on the battlefield due to their experience and the reverence paid to them by members of the Enclave. Equipped with an incredibly powerful cybel reactor that serves as both a power source and a weapon, the Kaddar Nova is a distinctive figure. Their bodies are enlarged and twisted by their constant exposure to cybel energy, and their ravaged faces cut a stark contrast to their powerful frames.

As the leader and figurehead of the Karist forces, the Kaddar Nova needed a suitably impressive model kit, and so the sprue comes with a nice array of parts to build them. But as always, of course, the sprue is only the starting point, and below I'll go through some quick and easy ways to further customise this fearsome individual.

Building your Kaddar Nova straight off the sprue lets you choose from three different sets of legs, two different arms for each side, two different heads, and an optional crown piece for the more formal-dressing Kaddar.







The indents in the crown mimic the extra eyes of the alien Angels that often accompany Karist forces. You can use this to make a more mysterious Kaddar Nova by taking the head with the scull-cap, trimming his nose down flat and gluing the crown piece on upside down over his face, so that the upper rim sits just below his eyes.



Headswaps are another easy way to mix things up on your models. The necks on the original Karist sets weren't all interchangeable (something that we've corrected in later Maelstrom's Edge models) but thanks to them being plastic that's easily fixed with a little cutting or filing. On the below model, I have used a head from the Tempest Elite set, with the helmet crust removed as it would hit up against the cybel reactor.



A more inscrutable look can be achieved using a Karist Trooper helmet with the neck trimmed down to fit, and the eye lenses sanded down to produce a blank faceplate. The staff on this model is a modified Cybel Glaive from the Faction Expansion sprue.



An advancing pose can be created with some careful cutting - trim a wedge out of the groin area where the legs join, so that they can be attached in a less spread position, and glue them so that one leg is to the rear slightly. Once the glue has set, cut or file the waist down flat and assemble the rest of the model - his robes largely hide the joint, but you can use a little modeling putty to fill any resulting gaps.



Alternatively, you can look for legs from elsewhere in the range. Trooper legs are too small, as they're not cybel-enhanced like the more elite Karist warriors, but by cutting through the waist of a Tempest Elite model with a razor saw, you can replace the Kaddar Nova's robed legs with walking, armoured legs instead.



Shadow Walker legs also work, although they're a fraction shorter. This Kaddar Nova is obviously just not quite as cybel-swollen as his compatriots yet.



The Kaddar Nova is only one aspect of the Kaddar priesthood, and others will be fleshed out eventually. In the meantime, though, it's fun to see where mashing bits together can lead you... The below model is a combination of Kaddar Nova and Shadow Walker parts, with some small tentacles taken from a couple of Mature Angel kits. I call him a 'Kaddar Noctis'.



Hopefully, this has given you some inspiration for your own Kaddar Nova builds! To get started, you can pick up the Kaddar Nova along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.



As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here.